Gavin Francis, 45, graduated in medicine from Edinburgh in 1999, then spent 10 years travelling. His book Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins was shortlisted for the Costa and Ondaatje prizes; Intensive Care, published in January, is his account of working as a GP during the pandemic. He practises as a doctor in Edinburgh.
What was your childhood or earliest ambition?
To get a trade, and see the world.
Private school or state school? University or straight into work?
State school — thank goodness. Then straight into work while at university studying medicine, first as a cinema usher, then a nursing auxiliary, then an anatomy demonstrator, then a barman — the best training in learning how to be a listening doctor, and appreciating just how much plurality there is in the ways of living your life.
Who was or still is your mentor?
I’ve never had one. But role models? I could suggest roomfuls, and more appear every day.
How physically fit are you?
Moderately, in that I bike a hundred miles a week between home and the clinic, but my resting pulse is over 60 far more often than I’d like.
Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
Confidence, enthusiasm, connections and luck seem more important than either in most areas of human endeavour.
How politically committed are you?
To one party, not at all. To the idea that politics can transform human lives for the better, very much.
What would you like to own that you don’t currently possess?
A machine that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere so fast that atmospheric CO2 will promptly return to pre-industrial levels. From its twin exhausts will drip an elixir that propagates human happiness and the serum for a Covid-19 vaccine. I promise to make the plans freely available.
What’s your biggest extravagance?
Owning my own home.
In what place are you happiest?
If not home, then the Isle of May, an island in the Firth of Forth, home to a handful of ornithologists, a colony of seals and hundreds of thousands of seabirds. Isolation can be very therapeutic, but I also love the city for its connections and possibilities.
What ambitions do you still have?
To see a think-piece for the FT in print. And to work out my own salvation with diligence.
What drives you on?
Curiosity, enthusiasm, awareness of my mortality, love of my kids.
What is the greatest achievement of your life so far?
My marriage.
What do you find most irritating in other people?
Bellicosity, arrogance, faux humility, using the last of the milk. I’m aware I’m not immune to these traits myself.
If your 20-year-old self could see you now, what would he think?
He might pause, shake his head, then say: “Well, at least you’ve still got your hair.” But I could tell him a thing or two. The juicy stuff that I really need to know is what my 70-year-old self will wish he could have said to my 45-year-old self.
Which object that you’ve lost do you wish you still had?
I lost a very fine hiking fleece on a Faroese mountainside, towards the end of a long and difficult trek. I’ve never found one that fitted or kept me warm quite so well, and suffered a few cold nights before I got back to Tórshavn. Also, the motorbike my wife and I drove from Orkney to New Zealand was stolen and torched not long after we got back home — I wouldn’t mind still having that, for sentimental reasons.
What is the greatest challenge of our time?
To find a way of creating wealth and using resources sustainably, without poisoning all of our literal and metaphorical wells.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
Absolutely — in that every action has consequences, ripple effects that change the world and the lives of others, in ever-expanding circles of influence, and will go on doing so long after we’re gone. In my clinical work, I see daily proof of this — it’s a great consolation.
If you had to rate your satisfaction with your life so far, out of 10, what would you score?
I’ll give myself a point for every decade I’ve lived so far to the full: four out of 10.
“Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession” by Gavin Francis is published by Canongate
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